Menu

Category Archives: Confederate States

After the election of Donald Trump, many people got irrational, particularly Governor Jerry Brown, and the people of California (who ironically opened an embassy in Moscow in protest). Since then, many people, both in California and across the country, have pushed for the Golden State’s secession. Last Tuesday, California’s Attorney General decided to humor the #CalExit organizers.

Last Tuesday, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra apparently finished his scotch, said “what the hell,” and gave his stamp of approval for a group of people to begin gathering the more than 585,000 signatures needed to allow a ballot initiative that would allow a ballot initiative calling for secession to be put on the 2018 ballot. If the ballot measure were to somehow pass, a commission would form to explore how the state could secede from the United States, unfortunately, this will never happen.

Secession isn’t a new idea, outside the Civil War, the idea pops up every couple of years, normally in Texas, and at that time realists endlessly mock these attempts, and for good reason, the fact remains that there is no way to secede from the Union written in the Constitution. Article IV Section 3 of the Constitution deals with how to admit a new state into the country, but the reverse is never discussed, and has been dismissed outright by plenty of respectable legal scholars.

In 2006, former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was asked by screenwriter Dan Turkewitz if a group of people suing the government for the right to secede would be a good plot point. Scalia responded saying that state’s do not have the right to secede. In his letter back to Turkewitz, Scalia said that such an issue would never even reach the Supreme Court:“To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. … Secondly, I find it difficult to envision who the parties to this lawsuit might be. Is the State suing the United States for a declaratory judgment? But the United States cannot be sued without its consent, and it has not consented to this sort of suit.”

What Justice Scalia pointed out in that first line is something most people don’t realize. In the eyes of the United States government, there no such thing as the “Confederate States of America.” The southern states, in their mind, were just occupied by hostile citizens. This line of thinking was pointed out in the 1869 Supreme Court case Texas v. White. This case argued that Texas’s Confederate state legislature had illegally sold bonds that were owned by Texas, and issued by the United States government as part of the compromise of 1850. While ruling on this case, the justices wrote; “The Constitution, in all its provisions… looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.”

So while Jefferson Davis and his friends may have seen themselves as an independent country, the United States hadn’t given them the go-ahead to secede, so they had no sovereignty. The Civil War was a war for independence, much like the American Revolution was a war for independence. We had to defeat the British before getting the go-ahead to secede; if we had lost, we’d have socialized medicine and a government that doesn’t respect individual rights, and do we really want that?

While it amuses us to think that a state that disagrees with our own core ideologies could soon be gone, it is unlikely to happen. So unfortunately it looks as though referring to San Francisco as a “foreign country” will remain hyperbole.

It seems as though the latest fad in the progressive movement is for city leaders across the country to prove how “progressive” they are by campaigning to remove any “offensive” statue, renaming any building that may have ties to slavery, and essentially eliminating any reference to American history that may be uncomfortable. Anything that alludes to the Confederate States of America is under protest by progressives. The city of New Orleans, for example recently spent $2.1 million dollars on removing four civil war era landmarks.

I wish more people would think like Condoleezza Rice, who told Fox and Friends;

“I want us to have to look at the names and recognize what they did; and be able to tell our kids what they did and for them to have a sense of their own history.”

In times like these, I think it’s important to remind people that most of the historical figures we admire had some shitty qualities.

Abraham Lincoln Believed in Racial Superiority

Abe Lincoln is often portrayed as a good man who fought for the freedom of millions of slaves. That was hardly the case; his wife’s family, owned slaves, afterall. What Lincoln really cared about was maintaining the Union, once writing;

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.”

But it was his quotes on racial superiority that show that Abe Lincoln, more than anything, pitied African Americans. The “Historical Review’s” Robert Morgan notes that on August 14th, 1862 Lincoln invited free black ministers to the White House, where during the conversation, Lincoln stated:

“You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffers from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.”

“And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

People seem to forget that young Abraham Lincoln grew up in a log cabin in southern Illinois, where he used to shepherd people across the Ohio river into Kentucky. Maybe it’s not fair to stereotype, but it’s hard to imagine growing up where he did made him the most tolerant person.

Gandhi Hates “Kaffirs”

Mahatma Gandhi was a civil rights leader that helped lead India to independence from the British. He’s seen as one of the world’s greatest civil rights leaders, a paragon for equality and pacifism.

Using the South African term “Kaffir” as a racial slur, there are multiple instances where Gandhi lets his prejudice shine through.

For example, Gandhi proclaimed that Europeans want to make Indians out to be lazy.. Like the kaffirs:

“Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”

“There is a bye-law in Durban which requires registration of coloured servants. This rule may be, and perhaps is, necessary for the Kaffirs who would not work, but absolutely useless with regard to the Indians. But the policy is to class the Indian with the Kaffir whenever possible.”

Not all brown skin is created equal:

“The £3 tax is merely a penalty for wearing the brown skin and it would appear that, whereas Kaffirs are taxed because they do not work at all or sufficiently, we are to be taxed evidently because we work too much, the only thing in common between the two being the absence of the white skin.”

What Gandhi really was, was a racial supremacist.

MLK Was a Sexist

Martin Luther King Jr. once said;

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

And he really meant the “men” part.

From 1957 until December of 1958 MLK wrote an advice column for “Ebony” magazine.

He had some interesting advice for women.

When asked by a woman how he should handle her cheating husband, King responded;

“In the meantime, since the other person is so near you might study her and see what she does for your husband that you might not be doing. Do you spend too much time with the children and the house and not pay attention to him? Are you careful with your grooming? Do you nag?”

He also suggested to an abused wife that she may be at fault for the abuse, and chided a single woman for unknowingly tempting her boyfriend into losing his virginity pre-marriage.

Mother Teresa Didn’t Care About the Poor

Mother Teresa is seen as a modern day saint. During her incredible life she set up schools and soup kitchens, doing missionary work across the globe. Revered for her work with the poor, she’s seen as this loving and compassionate figure. Whether or not the praise is deserved is up for debate; forcing homosexual conversion, and being friendly with dictators will do that.

One thing that can’t be questioned, is that she didn’t really care about the poor. Telling Christopher Hitchens;

“I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.”

In fact, the University of Ottawa conducted a study that outlined how fraudulent her entire career was, they conclude her image is the result of a relentless media campaign.

Whitewashing history to play to the sensitivity of individuals has gotten a little out of control. Society would be better off facing its history head on, even if it’s painful.